eWeek Google Explains How Search Actually Works eWeek Google wants users to know how sesarch actually happens, from the moment they type a query into the Search box on Google.com until the instant the results appear, ready for curious users to find...

There’s a whole lot of learning going on out there, but I’ve learned that it’s not all that easy to find.

For the last few years I’ve tried to keep up with it myself and help my students and colleagues keep up as well. I decided it was time to pull it all together. Here’s a first go at an infographic collecting some of the major professional learning opportunities out there for school librarians.

Please let me know what I missed and please feel free to embed and share with friends.

Finally, let me plead directly with any readers who exercise power in the scholarly publication process — because you edit a journal or a book series, you work for a publisher or undertake editing for authors, or you are a powerful person in your professional academic association. Look hard at the rules, conventions and styles that you are currently applying. Can you honestly say that your legacy requirements meet contemporary needs and have adapted to the digital dissemination of scholarship? Are your citation rules designed in a ‘born digital’ way? Do they foster open access and the replicability of research by getting the full texts of source materials in front of readers in the most direct and simple way possible? If not, why not think about changing?

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Common sense ideas for the 21st century. I particularly appreciate the thinking about OER as the preferred primary resource.

"Google is usually one of the first places students turn to when tasked with an assignment. Whether it’s for research, real-time results, or just a little digital exploration … it’s important they know how to properly Google. Lucky for teachers (and students, of course), Google has a handy set of lesson plans that are just waiting to be unleashed upon the leaders of tomorrow.

"While I understand there’s a LOT more to research than just Googling, it’s important to note that this is where nearly all students start their research. Therefore, it’s a critical skill if they’re going to start down the right paths.

"Below are 15 lesson plans courtesy of Google designed to make students better online researchers. They’re organized by difficulty and meant to help students (and everyone) become better online searchers."

This is a pet peeve of mine--schools are still not teaching kids how to do this properly, with disastrous results. Whether you homeschool or send a child to school, these lessons will help them use the Internet more effectively (and responsibly) for research projects.

The success of open government data is indisputable. By empowering data scientists as well as the general public to interrogate publicly shared government data sets, we have been able to discover new trends and correlations as well as spot malfeasance. Open data affects publicly funded academic research at a governmental and funder level as well, including the types of research supported and what happens with the data collected. Nonetheless, it took a recent statement from the Public Library of Science (PLOS) to ignite the conversation about open data between individual academic researchers.

An historian has unearthed the first unseen Sherlock Holmes story in more than 80 years that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to help save a town bridge.

Walter Elliot, 80, found the 1,300-word tale starring the famous detective in a collection of short stories written for a local bazaar.The wooden bridge in the Scottish town of Selkirk was destroyed by the great flood of 1902 and locals organised a three-day event to raise funds for a new one in 1904.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

This is no hoax. This find says something reassuring about printing on paper.

Surprisingly, modern telecommunications are part of the picture as Conan Doyle's portrayal of 'editorial demands' set's the scene.

I suspect most modern writers and nearly all bloggers are part- time workers at "Institute of Fiction" and reminded that card carrying members of the 'Faculty of Imagination".

The article includes a link to the full manuscript. I've read and re-read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories many times. What a treat!

Your responses to this questionnaire will help me write an article for Tech & Learning Magazine to illustrate this importance. All questions are optional, but I would love to be able to quote you!If you have any questions, please email me ShannonMersand@gmail.com

Most amazing of all, Google made this tool available for free. This despite an educational -- and, let's be honest, entertainment -- value that's virtually impossible to measure.

What you maybe didn't know is that Google has long offered a Pro version of Earth as well, one that cost a hefty $399 per year. Now, however, you can get Google Earth Pro absolutely free.

First things first: The words "free trial" still appear in that URL, but as you'll see when you click through to the sign-up page, "Sign up is no longer required for Google Earth Pro." All you have to do is download the installer, run it, then sign in using your e-mail address (as your username) and license code GEPFREE.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Do you remember when Google Earth first came online? I do! What a thrill to see the world flowing across your screen. My teenage kids would take over the machine to search the world (usually starting with the location of our house).

It was a thrill then, it's a thrill now. Free Google Earth Pro. (Free is of course a relative term that we could philosophize over-- with Google you pay in data, not coin. At least for now!

Do you remember when Google Earth first came online? I do! What a thrill to see the world flowing across your screen. My teenage kids would take over the machine to search the world (usually starting with the location of our house).

It was a thrill then, it's a thrill now. Free Google Earth Pro. (Free is of course a relative term that we could philosophize over-- with Google you pay in data, not coin. At least for now!

"New analyses of the hundreds of thousands of technical manuscripts submitted to arXiv, the repository of digital preprint articles, are offering some intriguing insights into the consequences—and geography—of scientific plagiarism. It appears that copying text from other papers is more common in some nations than others, but the outcome is generally the same for authors who copy extensively: Their papers don’t get cited much.

The map above, prepared by ScienceInsider, takes a conservative approach. It shows only the incidence of flagged authors for the 57 nations with at least 100 submitted papers, to minimize distortion from small sample sizes. (In Ethiopia, for example, there are only three submitting authors and two of them have been flagged.)"

This is a full time appointment. The expected start date is June 1, 2015.

The University of California, Berkeley seeks a collaborative and service-oriented librarian to provide research, teaching and learning support to the UC Berkeley community in optometry, ophthalmology, vision science, nutrition, health sciences, and medical sciences and to develop, promote, and enhance access to library collections.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

I worked my way through school working in the UC Berkeley Library system. It gave me a life long affinity for Libraries, information science, and the beauty of the stacks. The great privilege of (other than the chance to do my homework after I'd shelved all the returns) was a 'stack pass' that let me roam through spaces denied to most students. Those manuscript rooms were amazing. The hidden places remains a fine memory today.

Perhaps one of the readers of this Scoop.it will find their way into those same places?

Students’ confidence radically mismatches librarians’ assessment of their skills, two reports from EasyBib conclude, particularly in website evaluation, paraphrasing, and direct quotation. Also, students are using the open web less often they were two years ago, and dramatically more librarians are stressing the role of faculty in promoting information literacy. The first report, Trends in Information Literacy: A Comparative View, was published in May 2014; the second, Perspectives on Student Research Skills in K-12 and Academic Communities, came out the following October; taken together, the two reveal some thought-provoking data on information literacy across the country.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

As a classroom teacher I found teaching students how to paraphrase to be a very steep hill to climb. Many never budged from the first steps on the learning curve. This graph helps us visualize the mis-match between student self assessment and the assessment of experts.

To speak to this issue Dr. Carl Heine developed a challenging and highly effective online game that challenges misconceptions about paraphrase and plagiarism. To sample this no so simple tool The the Plagiarism Dropbox from 21CIF.com.

Pick a play. Click a line. Instantly see articles on JSTOR that reference the line.

JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

What librarian wouldn't love this? 21st Century Meets the 1600's. Indexed Genius. The intersection of Shakespeare, scholarship, and databases. Ah....

What I like about the digital poster session format is that not only do students conduct research and articulate a problem or solution, but they openly present on it as well. This has led to new instructional opportunities related visual literacy and related content. Students have to give careful thought to how they express their ideas.

It's time to raise the ceiling on school multipurpose rooms! Check out the interest and engagement among students, staff and community members this library ignited by making its multipurpose room "gallery space." (Of course, TVs that double as "digital posters" help generate a buzz, too.)

Gone are the days when educators could carefully choose a wide selection of books for the school library, and then expect students' learning would be well-rounded as a result of those inputs. Today there fabulous digitized learning materials, and only some are books. Check out the types of resources being curated, organized and rendered retrievable by the Digital Public Library of America. Are K-12 school libraries on board?

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